


Take A Shot

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Past Abuse, Photographer!Kylo, Student!Rey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-30 12:54:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6424903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I can take what I want," the man says, circling around Rey with his camera.</p><p>"Sure," she replies testily.  </p><p>“Take a shot at me.” </p><p>In which terrible puns and decisions are made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Aberration

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luvkurai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvkurai/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Charcoal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5827282) by [luvkurai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvkurai/pseuds/luvkurai). 



> Writing this was like having diarrhea. The words flowed out of me like liquid shit. So I apologise in advance if the quality is the same.
> 
> This is an attempt to mix two of my favourite things- Charcoal and bad puns. I can only hope that it matches up to a fraction of the former's glory.

**Aberration**  
_Failing in the ability of a lens to produce a true image._

* * *

 

It's not five minutes into their meeting and already, Rey is second-guessing herself for signing up. She should've known that the job was too perfect- a good location just four bus stops away, low requirements- how difficult was posing, anyway, and above all, great pay.

Being a photography model should have beat waitressing hands down any day. However, Finn's and Poe's job at a cafe seems so much better than this one, now that she's actually doing it. The photographer didn’t even bother to introduce himself when they’d met, instead, he simply strode away and gestured to a room.

She's strapped into a strange inclined table of some sort, and wears some sort of bandage-like bindings. The outfit is slightly revealing, and her discomfort is magnified by the photographer’s intent gaze, assessing and inspecting for any flaws and imperfections. After an hour of non-stop adjustments, he releases her from the table to change the angle. Even though she's annoyed by his obsessive need for order, Rey's glad for the chance to stretch her legs, which have developed pins and needles.

After a short break, he orders her to get back into the room, and she’s lying on the metal contraption again. He leans over her, breathing through his mouth, and it is unexpectedly _not_ disgusting. She’s cold in the costume, and the warm puffs of air are strangely welcome.

She wriggles a little, trying to get her shoulders warm as well. Kylo puts a hand out to halt the movement, the other one occupied with the complex metal bands that encircle her limbs.

“Stop moving. It will only take longer to adjust.” She sighs under her breath and relaxes, going limp. Finally, he finishes and steps back to admire his work.

Suddenly, Rey is overcome by a wave of panic. It hadn’t occurred to her that she would be restrained like that as earlier, he didn’t put on all of them. She has to fight the urge to struggle against the bands.

“How long will it take? How many pictures do you need to take?” She asks, desperate to get out as soon as possible.

"I can take what I want," the man says, circling around Rey with his camera.

"Sure," she replies testily. 

“Take a shot at me.”

“Do not talk to me like that,” he snaps. “I’m in charge here.”

“Fine,” she says, nearly rolling her eyes.  “I don’t even know your name.”

His reply is immediate.

“Kylo Ren,” he states and it takes Rey a moment to realize that he isn’t joking.

 “Well, OK then, Kylo. Let’s get this over with.” She can tell that he’s irritated by her overly cheerful tone, and the thought is more pleasing than it should be.

\---

Rey silently endures the ache of maintaining a fixed position, the glare in her eyes from bright studio lights, and the crushing boredom she totally didn't expect. All this would have been bearable if the photographer was easy-going and encouraging to the first-time model. As it so happens, Kylo Ren is an impossible control freak with unreasonably high standards.

"A little more to the left. Tilt your chin higher." He barks out orders in quick succession, pausing only to take a breath.

Finally, he loses patience and wrenches her head roughly to the side.

"Ow!" Rey exclaims. "That hurt!"

"Good," he replies curtly. "Now you know how to listen to me."

Rey grumbles under her breath and he rebukes her again.

And so it is like this for the rest of the three hours she spends in the tiny studio: Kylo ordering her about and she needling him mercilessly, with the photographer retaliating by invading her personal space. Or perhaps he has no concept of it whatsoever.

Rey begins to lean towards the latter as the minutes tick by. Kylo tugs and swipes at her hair, strokes her arm in a poor attempt to relax her, and then appears to stare fixedly at her lips for long stretches of time. If it were anybody else, Rey would have felt rather violated, but after all, she’s just in it for the money. The exact position and angle of her body are what Kylo needs to concern himself with, after all. He probably does this to every model who enters the studio.

If only Rey knows how wrong she is.

\---

He enters the studio by the fire escape, and meets Phasma, who is taking a smoke there.

“For god’s sake, Phas, it’s not even nine in the morning,” he snaps at her, “you’ll die of cancer before you’re forty.”

The blonde woman’s only response is to blow a puff of nicotine at him. Ignoring her, Kylo slides open the window and jumps into the studio.

“Oh, the girl’s in the lobby,” she says, just before the window latch clicks shut. He groans inwardly. How many times had he reminded the secretary to simply send the models straight up to the studio? Now, he has to go downstairs to fetch her, totally defeating the purpose of using the fire escape.

Kylo barely speaks to the girl, a decent-looking teenager with strangely knotted hair. He’s annoyed straight-away; didn’t he specify for the model to let down her hair? Now, nothing can be done about it- it will just look messy if she unties it, and Kylo cannot abide messiness. He shows her to the studio and sends her to change into the costume- something the client made-up at the last minute after hearing that the earlier model had pulled out. The old out-fit was custom-made, so it can’t be reused.

This one is a tangle of loose bindings and flowy pants, obviously meant to fit whomever the studio called up as a replacement. It’s practical and frankly ugly, but Kylo couldn’t care less. He long ago became indifferent to the beauty of the people he photographs, as making them look good was completely different from how attractive they already were. With the help of clever lighting and staged contrasts, he can transform this plain girl into something better.

The portfolio he’s putting together is for a modern, surrealist art museum, and anyway, curators didn’t give a shit about how the images looked like, but rather, what they represent. Kylo can hand them a blank piece of paper with a long essay on how it embodies the emptiness of human life and they’ll gladly frame it up with a nice “our choice” sticker.

He knows because he tried it before.

The utter hilarity of the situation completely failed to compensate for the horrific revelation about his line of work.

\---

The girl is obviously new to the modelling business, and this makes Kylo even more short-tempered than usual. The last one left in a huff, too fed-up with his demanding working conditions, and that’s the only reason why he consented to using a greenhorn.

He purposely takes a long time adjusting the complex metal bands that restrain her to the reclining board. It’s the product after a long time of personal reflection on the state of victimisation, on being held against one’s will, yet of discovering hidden depths within the self while in that helpless situation. The model’s expression is planned to be of exquisite pain and suffering, even as her body writhes with beautiful grace while restrained by the large and ugly metal bands. A reflection of how something wonderful can be created by terrible things.

This is what he’d written as his inspiration for the project, but he likes to think that it has another meaning. A greater purpose.        

To fuck with the young model currently making his life hell.

She is obviously uncomfortable with the clothes, the restraining board, and his creepy stare, and this makes him strangely delighted, as if seeing her pain is a testament to his engineering skills. The board was made one hectic, alcohol-fuelled weekend at a friend’s metal welding garage, and he is proud of it. It bears a deliberate resemblance to an interrogation chair, though only subtly.

And just as the girl becomes used to the stiff, awkward position, Kylo says that he needs to change the angle of the board, and releases her from it. At least, she’s obedient. It makes his life and attempts to torment her easier.

He calls her back after a few minutes. Leaning over her to put on the bands again, Kylo breathes heavily through his mouth, trying his best to unnerve her. Instead, she seems to relax, shifting slightly.

What the hell.

He continues to adjust her body, looking to create that perfect pose to match the one in his mind’s eye. They establish a pattern: move and shoot, then move again. If she’s unsettled by having his hands on her, it doesn’t show. Kylo has to admire her for it: all too often, the models complain about how obsessive he is, and one nearly even tried to file a lawsuit for molestation. But a few thousand dollars shut her up, and he continues to pursue the perfection that keeps eluding him.

He goes beyond this with the girl, trying to shift her a millimetre here, an inch there. Testing her limits, her boundaries. She’s fine with touching her face, or her arms, or even the lower back, but brush anywhere near her inner thighs and she starts to tremble ever so slightly.

Kylo wonders if she’d been raped.

It’s none of his business, of course, but once the thought flits across his mind, it’s impossible to ignore. Then he remembered her smart-ass response to the purposely creepy statement he’d made earlier, then dismisses it as ridiculous speculation and over analysation on his part. Still, he wonders if he’d misjudged her as some colleague student making a quick buck.

“You can go now,” he says, undoing the bands for the last time. “Just come back when we call you.”

The girl slides off the board in relief, walking out of the door.

‘Wait,” he called, “I haven’t paid you yet.”

She lingers at the doorway while he fishes out a few hundred from his pocket. As a bug-eyed gaze falls upon the money, Kylo realizes that she didn’t know that the job paid so well.

It isn’t actually a lot to him, and he’ll just enter the transaction as a side project, but the girl’s huge smile makes him understand perfectly how much it means to her.

“Wow, thank you, Kylo,” she exclaims.

“You’re welcome,” he says, and finds out that he really means it. And that he doesn’t know her name.

By the time he thinks to ask her, she’s gone.

He slams the door shut and sinks onto the floor, feeling like a shit. It’s funny how he doesn’t feel sorry at all for being so mean, but only for something most people regard as a formality.

Suddenly, a loud knocking on the door interrupts his self-loathing. He yanks the door open, and there she is, clutching a pile of clothes.

“I forgot to return this,” she admits, flushed.

“It’s alright,” Kylo says, taking them.

“Oh, and my name is Rey,” she says. “I also forgot to tell you that.”

He smiles unconsciously, and the feeling of light-hearted happiness stays long after she leaves.

\---

A strange feeling blossoms in Rey after seeing Kylo’s face, transformed by a smile into something else entirely. He seems younger, happier, and even attractive. Maybe he was only an asshole to models for the first day on the job. _Maybe not_ , a more cynical part of her says. But whatever the case, she has plenty of time to find out- Kylo has scheduled photoshoots to be once every two weeks, for three months. Apparently, the photographs have to undergo heavy editing and arrangement, which take up a lot of time. Rey doesn’t mind- he probably has to use lots of tools to make her picture look like anything worth selling.

During the two weeks before she sees him again, Rey thinks about researching Kylo Ren. It’s obviously not his real name, she knows that much, but somehow, knowing more about him will take away that air of mystery that seems so integral to his identity. Somehow, she wants to hold onto that illusion for as long as it lasts.

He isn’t a nice person, either. That much is evident. So it’s probable that anything she finds about him won’t reflect too well on the man. Rey hates being influenced by another person’s opinions- she can make her own judgment, thank you very much.

By and large, Rey finds excuses as to why she is so reluctant to find out more about him. Besides, if she asks around, and people realize that she’s working as a model, and not a waitress… there may be problems. Like the bitchy cliques of girls who didn’t even think that somebody like her, from the Outer Rim, was worthy of a place at the University. Rey doesn’t want to find out what they’d do after finding out that she was a model, even if the reality was so far divorced from the glamorous depictions in media. She doesn’t even want to imagine such a situation.

So, when the weekend comes by and Finn asks her if she wants to go to the new cantina that just opened downtown, she can’t bring herself to lie to him.

“I’m sorry, Finn, I’m busy,” she tells him, hoping that he’d take the hint and stop pestering her.

“Come on, Rey, we know that you’re always ready to party!”

He slurs the last word, and Rey wonders if they’re already there. Finn could never hold his liquor. She can just hear Poe chanting in the background, probably a drinking game of some sort.

“Not now, not today. I’m really sorry,” she repeats.

“Please, Rey, please…” Rey can just imagine the large puppy-dog eyes he’s making right now, and they are just as effective even when he’s drunk and metallic rock music is blasting in the background. Her resolve breaks down, and a short drive later, she finds herself in the drunken embrace of two of her best friends.

It takes a couple of drinks for Rey to loosen up, and soon, she’s telling them all about her modelling exploits and the insufferable Kylo Ren.

“So he was like, I can take what I want,” she says, doing a very bad impersonation of Kylo’s deep voice. Finn and Poe burst into wild laughter, and Rey has to shush them before continuing.

“Then I said,” she starts, but then Finn interrupts.

“You can take my picture!” He giggled madly, and mimes doing so.

Rey sighed, and decides that they all had enough. Anyway, there’s only fifteen minutes left before her job. She hails a taxi and pushes the drunk Finn and the not-so-drunk Poe into it, then pays the fare for their ride home. This leaves her barely enough time to get to the studio, and she is nearly late.

Weirdly enough, she bursts into the lobby at the same time as Kylo, and a blonde-haired woman quirks an eyebrow at their entrance.

“Coincidence,” Kylo mutters, more to himself than anyone else, “that’s all it is.”

Rey laughs in her head at how unsettled he looks. Actually, in her current, slightly inebriated state, she laughs at anything. Aloud.

Thankfully, in the fancy, polished steel lobby, nobody is rude enough to point that out.

\---

Once safely inside the studio, Kylo gets straight to the point.

“Were you drinking?” he questions accusingly.

“Does it matter?” Rey asks in return, pouting slightly and not realizing it.

As it happens, not really. Kylo finds that she’s much more manageable with a little alcohol in her system, and there isn’t any problem in the posing. More like keeping it.

Rey seems unable to hold herself up, and her head keeps flopping down onto her chest. Her legs are splayed in a thoroughly unflattering position. Kylo tightens the bands of metal to no avail. Finally, he loses patience and smacks her thigh, hard. 

Rey whimpers a little, then shifts to the side. Sighing in frustration, Kylo reaches out a hand to push her head up- and his hand brushes across her chest. He blushes an interesting shade of puce, and if Rey was sober enough to appreciate it, she would have been amused. Instead, she swats his hand away, and frowns slightly.

“Don’t do that,” she says petulantly. Before Kylo can restrain himself, the question is out of his mouth.

“Why?”

“He never asked,” Rey replies languidly, shrugging slightly with her left shoulder. She notices the confusion on Kylo’s face and elaborates.

“Before doing it.” _And other things,_ Kylo thinks.

Some things are better left unspoken, and this is one of them. Kylo realizes with a slight tinge of nausea when everything is out in the open. His mind is filled with _who_ and _when_ and _why_.

“I see…” he says, hesitantly reaching out for the least offensive reply.  

The air in the studio is suddenly stifling and Kylo feels trapped, stuck in this tiny room with this strange girl and her past. Deciding to give up on today’s work, he undoes the restraints without a word, allowing her to go.

 “Erm,” Rey pauses at the doorway, embarrassed. “I don’t have any money to go back home. You were supposed to pay me.”

 Against his better judgement, Kylo says the first thing that comes to his mind.

“I can drive you.”

He’s suddenly glad for the snap decision when Rey beams back at him.

\---

The ride to her tiny flat is mostly quiet, except when he turns off the radio at her request.

“Didn’t know you’re a 70s fan,” she giggles and makes a face when electric guitar wafts out of the car speakers.

“Ah, now you know my secret,” he admits, smiling slightly.  This Rey is so different from the one he first met, and Kylo finds that he likes her this way. For all her drunken clumsiness, it seems that alcohol has impaired her mental inhibitions as well, and now she’s much more relaxed around him.

As his car, an ancient Upsilon-class model, speeds along the highway, Rey sinks lower and lower in her seat, before falling asleep entirely. Her head rests slightly against his shoulder, and the ticklish sensation of her hair brushing across the bare skin doesn’t drive him to distraction. Rather, Kylo finds it oddly soothing. He imagines pulling her hair back and sucking on her neck, hard enough to leave a bruise, and his fingers clench around the steering wheel.

“We’re here,” he says, gently jerking her awake. Rey groans and writhes deeper into the seat, her head resting more firmly against his arm. He has to control the urge to laugh, or stroke her forehead, or any of a thousand and one inappropriate things.

For a single, dizzying moment, Kylo imagines letting her stay there, sleeping in his car, until they reach his apartment. Carrying her into his bedroom and exposing the freckled curve of her neck, then kissing it wildly, passionately.

He does none of them and instead, pushes her more roughly. This time, Rey wakes up. She’s monetarily disoriented, then gets out of the vehicle.

“Thanks, Kylo,” she says, then bounds up the stairs and is safe inside the flat, all within the span of a few seconds. He lingers outside for a while, the engine idling, wondering when, and how exactly did his thoughts begin to only consist of a single word.

_Rey._


	2. Contre Jour

**Contre Jour**

_French for "against daylight". In which the camera is pointing directly toward a light source._

* * *

 

It’s absolutely maddening, how Kylo can only work on her stills and nothing else. His concentration is wholly focused on Rey, and Rey alone.

He cannot look at other pictures before wondering about the shape of her lips, the gentle curve of her delicate flesh. Her lowered eyes, half-closed and sparkling.

They evoke things in him that were abandoned a long time ago, or so he thought.

In actual fact, he doesn’t really need to edit them. Rey, for all his earlier misgivings, has flawlessly conveyed exactly what he wanted. If he were a different man, he might have said that her technique was perfect. But Kylo knows otherwise. He knows that she wasn’t acting, that she is really that vulnerable, yet perfect, at the same time.

It’s almost like how tempered steel becomes stronger from a hotter fire. Kylo remembers that even as such metal becomes tougher, brighter, it is ultimately rendered more brittle. He’d melted many sheets of the material while constructing the board.

His friend said that Kylo was too rough, too impatient while welding the frame together. Apparently, the blowtorch was a truly remarkable thing, something he couldn’t really get the hang of.

The failures litter the office storeroom like surrealist sculptures, surrounded by the detritus of corporate life.

This time, Kylo will be more careful. Or try to, at the very least.

He licks his lips.

Breaking Rey is swiftly becoming more interesting.

\---

The decision to render a photograph as monochrome is a sudden impulse that occurs to him, one that showcases Kylo’s skill rather impressively.

In startling black and white, the contrast between the exquisitely graceful posture Rey’s adopted under his careful prodding and the oppressively ugly board is especially stark. Her expression seems to be of judgmental indifference, even as her own body is on display. The whites of her eyes glower straight at the viewer.

Kylo watches it for too long to be judged as simply curious.

Actually, he stares at all of her pictures for similarly extended durations.

He spends the weekend in a perpetual state of arousal, not that anyone can tell, with him cloistered away in the studio. The bizarre combination of sexual frustration and being kept indoors bring up old memories of the summers spent at his uncle’s photography classes, ones that he instantly suppresses.

Still, he stays inside, lingering over the gallery prints of Rey. Refusing to indulge in any base instincts and failing slightly.

The artificially flowery scent of Febreze wafts out of the studio whenever he opens the door.

Kylo hasn’t left the building for over two days, preferring to wash up in the staff bathroom and beg a sandwich or two from Phasma. In all honesty, it’s quite weird, how such a freakishly tall woman can subsist on limp lettuce and egg mayo squashed between two slices of wholegrain.

She notices him making a face, then rolls her eyes impatiently.

“Just take it already.”

“Fine,” Kylo groans. “Next time, I’m ordering pizza.”

A look of wistful longing passes over her severe features, and is gone just as quickly.

“Tell me if there’s salad,” Phasma says, and then marches off to her office.

As Kylo walks back to the studio, a poster tacked on the noticeboard catches his eyes.  Before he knows it, his phone is out of a jeans pocket and he’s calling Rey.

She answers too quickly for indecision to overcome him, and this is strangely unexpected, yet welcoming.

“Hi,” she says, clearly unfamiliar with his caller ID.

“Who’s this?”

“Are you free tonight?”

Kylo goes straight to the point. The deep baritone of his voice is instantly recognized, and she can’t help but gasp a little.

“Uh, yeah, I guess,” Rey replies.

“Good, because I would have made you gone anyway. There’s a gallery showing at 8pm today, by invite only, but I can bring a guest.”

“Ok…” her voice is hesitant, and Kylo belatedly realizes how authoritative he sounded. He elaborates in a more neutral tone.

“It will be good for you to go; lots of established models are being showcased.”

“Where is it?” she asks.

Feeling a delicious warmth at her acceptance, Kylo tells her that he can drive her there.

\---

Rey is slightly guilty about making the split-second decision to go, but then again, Kylo was pretty insistent. Besides, she was getting nowhere studying for an upcoming test.

The words couldn’t stick in her head, and she gave up after scrutinizing countless pages of code that she can’t make sense of. This is becoming a common occurrence, but Rey is loath to admit that she’s struggling as a computer science student.

Back home, where there were only dusty textbooks and a woefully under equipped terminal available, she was incredibly excited to learn new things, yearning to explore beyond the harsh deprivation of Jakku. It used to be that the firm, reliable rules of computing were wholly unlike the shifting sands in the desert planet, that she was able to comprehend them almost instantly, that the future was full of promise if only she worked hard enough.

Now that she’s finally achieved her goal, Rey realizes that it was simply the beginning. She still remembers what echoed through her mind as she entered the sprawling University campus for the first time, afraid and amazed at the same time.

_These are your first steps…_

They were not easy ones. She’d lived on instant noodles for months at a time, navigated the complex social interactions of young adults, and studied like never before. Of all the interesting things she could’ve minored in, why did it have to be Axiology?

She supposes that the decision was borne out of a misguided need to understand value systems other than what she knew in Jakku. If she wasn’t here, it was more likely than not that she’d be a scavenger, limited to salvaging bits of scrap metal for a little bit of food.

Writing about that in her dissertation made her realize how privileged she was to escape.

It barely got her a decent grade, but she’s glad. Maz, the kindly cafeteria lady whom she’d befriended, had been a source of great wisdom and advice.

_When in doubt, ask the teacher. Or a classmate. Or yourself. Was Faust really such a pompous asshole?_

_Desperate times call for desperate measures, like weed cookies._

_Don’t sleep during lessons, no matter how boring they were. Sleep during assemblies._

_Whatever you do, don’t ever, ever eat the meat loaf they served on Thursdays._

Rey had to thank her especially for the last one, after seeing more than one student keel over and turn green. It also helped a lot that she had drug-infused treats to tide her over marathon studying sessions.

Kylo would probably have a heart attack if she brings them over as a snack.

Rey grins a little at the thought, then flips open her coursework.

\---

He turns up ten, fifteen minutes early. Rey catches sight of his huge black car before he gets out of it. Her mouth suddenly feels dry, and she gets up to open the door for him.

She can hardly recognize him like this, except for the hair. The god- awful long hair that’s been sprayed into shape, immaculate for once.

As her eyes trace the tailored fit of his suit, Rey realizes that she has to completely redo her earlier evaluation of him. Back at the studio, Kylo obviously didn’t give a shit for the company’s image, electing to dress simply in a pair of black jeans and turtleneck. This time, he shows off a surprisingly good taste in fashion. And physique. Maybe, all photographers developed such nice torsos from the heavy equipment they’d had to lug around.

Whatever the case, if not for his abrasive personality, Kylo would be freaking hot. Her cheeks feel warm, and she tries to quash such immoral thoughts about the decades-older man.

“Are you done staring at me?” Kylo snaps, and brushes past her into the open doorway.

Rey is annoyed that he noticed, and replies without thinking.

“Sorry, but nice clothes are meant to be looked at.”

“Thank you,” he says mockingly, then hands her something wine coloured and wrapped in plastic.

“I forgot to tell you about the formal dress code,” Kylo says unapologetically, gazing appraisingly at her flowered dress. She’d borrowed it from her roommate, whose taste is slightly questionable.

Rey accepts the gown with no small sense of outrage, but this melts away entirely when she finally wears it.

“How do I look?” she asks, twirling slightly.

“Stop moving,” commands Kylo. Truth to be told, he’d not dizzy because of her movement. It’s because of how utterly captivating she looks.

He’d spent a few days intensely studying high resolution and professional images of her, and yet they’re dust in full view of the actual person.

“We need to go now,” he says, distantly aware of time passing as the girl becomes uncomfortable under his gaze.

\---

They arrive just as the doors are opened by uniformed valets. Kylo shakes his head when one of them makes eye contact with him, driving straight to the carpark himself.

“I prefer to be the only person sitting in the driver’s seat,” Kylo explains.

Rey makes a small noise of comprehension, then gets out of the vehicle. She’s not used to wearing high heels, and wobbles slightly on their way to the elevator.

Finally, after a few near-accidents when she trips, Kylo loses patience and holds her arm, tight. Strangely enough, she isn’t intimidated by this gesture, but rather touched.

Rey is beginning to learn that Kylo’s isn’t like most people. In fact, he isn’t like anybody she’d met before. And she doesn’t give a damn about that.

The two of them march out arm in arm from the elevator, and the people crowded into the marble foyer fall silent.

Kylo ignores their muttered whispers and camera flashes, putting on a pair of aviator sunglasses from his coat pocket.

It isn’t as easy for Rey to look relaxed and indifferent. She twitches a little under the crowd’s scrutiny, and somehow manages to hear what they’re saying, no matter how low the volume. Maybe she’s going crazy, but the possibility doesn’t seem so remote now that she’s doing something impossible for a skinny scavenger from the Outer Rim.

Getting out of that sandy hellhole. Being accepted in to the prestigious University of Coruscant. Accompanying a sadistic photographer to what is probably the poshest event she’d ever went to.

And to think that Kylo sounded so dismissive of being invited to it… Either he’s incredibly conceited, or simply doesn’t care for such things.

As they stroll through the gallery, where the prints are artfully suspended by invisible strings, and small polished placards list the photographer and price, Rey begins to suspect the latter. Unlike most of the other attendees, Kylo is paying actual attention to the works, instead of giving the pictures a token glance before networking.

“Look,” she says, tugging on his arm, “that’s good.”

It’s a still life of a brutally murdered cat by somebody called Phashesthiya Jones. According to the plague affixed below, the cat was a victim of a string of animal abuse cases committed in a shady neighborhood full of druggies.

At first, Rey can’t tell what drew her to the gory photograph, but she’s unable to tear her gaze from it. The more she stares at the mutilated animal lying in a puddle of blood, the creepier it looks, until it seems to staring back at her. And _winking_.

Kylo nods in agreement.

“Phas doesn’t usually take pictures, but when she does-” He gestures vaguely, then continues. “It’s bloody fantastic.”

“Wait so _Catnap_ was done by the scary lady in the studio?”

“By Phasma, yes.”

To say that Rey is surprised is a huge understatement. Her eyes bulge, and she blows out her cheeks. It’s a comical sight, and Kylo is mildly bothered by the fact that he finds it endearing.

“By the way, don’t ever attempt to use her full name. It never ends well.”

Rey nobs her head in response.

“Close your mouth. She’s here.”

Phas strides over, glances at Kylo at eye level, and then down at Rey.

“Didn’t know that you’d turn up,” she says critically to him.

“Oh, please, I wouldn’t miss this for Hux’s reaction. How did you get this past him?”

“I have my ways.”

“As if scrambling all his correspondence with Twi’lek porn until he caved in was an original idea.”

“It’s not my fault that most of it ended up in your inbox! Who asked him to send you so many love letters?”

A tense pause follows, in which Kylo appears to be slightly miffed.

“That was a low blow,” he finally says.

“Or so says the person who played heavy metal in the studio when he changed your IT password.”

“I was younger! You weren’t.”

Rey is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with each barbed comment that passes between them, but the two tall people seem completely at ease with their hostile conversation.

Finally, the near-argument ends when Phas bursts out laughing, thumping Kylo hard on his shoulder and wishing him luck for the showing.

Rey’s glad when she’s gone, but doesn’t try to reason with herself.

After all, there is no rational explanation for the poisonous feelings that set in when the both of them joked around with such familiarity.

Or so she hopes.

\---

They walk around the gallery a few more times, and Kylo tells Rey what he knows about certain works. For example, the special characteristics about their props, lighting effects, or even inspirations if he knew the photographer personally.

She notices that he lets his guard around her when talking about his passion, gesturing animatedly and simply not being a jerk. She appreciates it and reciprocates, not minding when he grabs her while they move from one exhibit to another, or when he doesn’t bother to say where there’re going before dragging her there.

After a few hours, her feet start to hurt and her attention wanes. Fortunately, that about the time when Kylo decides that he can’t stand the crowd anymore.

It’s dark outside when they emerge from the brightly lit lobby, eyes slowly adjusting to the sudden gloom.

“I hope that you’d enjoyed yourself.”

Kylo’s casual tone betrays none of his apprehension. Did she think that he was too serious? Demanding? Extreme?

 Impulsively, Rey reaches up and gives him a hug.

“Thank you,” she says, her face buried in his suit, smelling that strange mix of cologne and darkroom chemicals.

What takes her breath away isn’t the fact that Kylo didn’t push her aside, but rather, that he’d responded.

Moments later when it’s over, Rey’s scalp still tingles where his lips brushed against her forehead.

The thought of them on other places does things to her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unlike Charcoal, it seems that there will be a few more chapters before our beloved pairing is consummated. 
> 
> Also, I have utterly no intention of writing the next Christian Grey. 
> 
> _Sorry!_


End file.
